


Dreaming in Red

by Anonymous



Category: The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: Anal Sex, Blood, Blood As Lube, Bondage, Dream Sex, Dreams and Nightmares, Enemies to Lovers, Established Relationship, F/F, Families of Choice, Fisting, Frottage, Getting Together, Kink Discovery, M/M, Masochism, Multi, Oral Sex, Pre-Canon, Pre-Movie: The Old Guard (2020), Rimming, Rough Oral Sex, Rough Sex, Smut, Spit As Lube, Violent Sex, Worldbuilding
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-07
Updated: 2020-08-07
Packaged: 2021-03-06 02:26:50
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,617
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25525897
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: Much later, Quynh says with a wicked grin that Andromache can hear in the dark, "You know, they're dreaming of us too."It doesn't precisely become a competition—well, it does, but not the sort where anyone loses.
Relationships: Andy | Andromache of Scythia/Quynh | Noriko, Andy | Andromache of Scythia/Quynh | Noriko/Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani/Nicky | Nicolo di Genova, Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani/Nicky | Nicolò di Genova
Comments: 20
Kudos: 230
Collections: Anonymous, Battleship 2020, Battleship 2020 - Yellow Team





	Dreaming in Red

**Author's Note:**

  * For [liesmyth](https://archiveofourown.org/users/liesmyth/gifts).



Andromache jolts awake, shuddering, her night robe stuck to her with sweat. "No," she whispers. "No, no!"

Quynh looks up from where she's mending a shirt by candlelight. "What is it?" She looks around. Nothing seems amiss; they've been safely hidden away in this little house in Varna for a decade now, and only take turns keeping watch because if they fall out of the habit they'll eventually have to relearn it.

"I dreamed." The words choke Andromache. She presses a hand to her solar plexus. "A man died. A sword through him, here." She drops the hand to her thigh. "And another, sliced open here, bleeding out. It felt so _real_."

Quynh puts the shirt down. "Like us?"

Andromache nods slowly. "Like us. But... two at once? I think..." She shudders. "I think they killed each other."

She and Quynh stare at each other, wondering what it would be like to be mortal enemies instead of lovers. Andromache looks away first. The thought is unbearable.

Andromache has less than no desire to go back to sleep, so she takes up the post by the fire and shoos Quynh into bed. An hour later, she's just finished with the shirt—Quynh is more deft with a needle by far—when Quynh starts tossing and turning, her hand groping for the knife that Andromache quickly moves out of reach. "Quynh, wake up," she says, quietly but urgently. "It's only a dream."

Quynh's eyes fly open. "I felt them die," she gasps. "The dark man—he nearly took the other one's head off." Andromache helps her sit up, holds her, feels her shaking. Neither of them knows for sure whether they would survive such an injury. Or neither had known, until now. "And the pale man... he..." She clutches her belly and sobs. "It was like Lykon, it was just like Lykon when he died."

Neither of them sleeps much more that night, or for many nights following. They dream of two warriors slaying each other, again, and again, and again.

In the fine days late in summer, the dreams change. Andromache sees a teacup, a gold ring, a hand holding a pen rather than a sword. The Moslem is an artist—almost a compulsive one, who will doodle with his finger in the dust if there's nothing else nearby—and she sees more of the Christian in his drawings than through his eyes. The two of them have settled their differences, it seems, or at least realized they're better off together than apart. Quynh dreams more of the Christian, and one day she glimpses him signing _Nicolò_ to a letter. 

Without discussing it, they begin to divide the contents of the house into _keep_ and _let go_. Quynh gives their best cooking pot to a favored neighbor. Andromache reluctantly trades her beloved old stallion, Daikon, for a bold, intelligent young mare who will keep pace with Quynh's feisty Suong. She names the new horse Zele (after a cabbage the mare steals from a cart as they're on their way home) and starts riding her every morning, remembering how to use those muscles, remembering how good it feels to have the wind in her face and well-trained horseflesh beneath her. Ten years is too long to be in one place. They should have left sooner.

Quynh is certain that Nicolò's letter said he was going home, and with any luck the new immortals will realize they're better off together than apart, so Andromache and Quynh decide to travel down the coast to Konstantinoupolis and then follow the returning Crusaders to Roma, going the long way around by Venezia and Genova. The sea route might be faster, but Quynh hates traveling by water. If they hurry, they'll reach Venezia before winter sets in.

"It'll be nice to go back to Konstantinoupolis," Quynh says in Greek as she rolls up the map. They're refreshing their memories of the language, or at least Quynh is. Andromache spoke only Greek for most of two thousand years, and her challenge is not to remember it but to forget it in order to make space for the very different Greek that's used now. 

"I suppose."

"I hear Alexios has done good things for the city."

Andromache spits on the floor. "Fuck Alexios."

"It was the—"

"It was the Polovtsy, yes, and never mind that Byzantine gold bought them." Andromache's mouth twists. "Dead children don't care who killed them."

"We saved as many as we could," Quynh says. It's what she always says. It's always true.

"It wasn't enough," Andromache says. It's what she always says. It's always true.

They ride hard, glorying in being on the road again, and at night they sleep too deeply to dream very much. This leaves Andromache completely unprepared for the vision she falls into one night at a shabby roadside guest house. She feels lips, urgent, pressing against her mouth, and a hand gripping her hip, and his other hand—

She thrashes awake, reaching out blindly in the dark. "Another dream?" Quynh says, taking her hand. 

Andromache drags Quynh close, kissing her urgently, guiding Quynh's hand between her legs where she still feels the ghost of an organ she's never before wanted to have, and the ghost of fingers closing around it.

"Oh," Quynh says, startled. "Are they—"

" _Please,_ " Andromache says, desperate with someone else's arousal, and Quynh leaves the questions for later. She grinds the heel of her hand against Andromache's clit, and that's all Andromache needs to come so hard she hears the ocean roaring in her ears.

The next night it's Quynh's turn to wake breathless with passion. She doesn't even say anything, just straddles Andromache's thigh and rides it until a long groan tears out of her throat. She collapses against Andromache's shoulder, panting, and Andromache holds her, smiling into her long dark hair.

They thought they'd learned everything they needed to know about each other's unchanging bodies, but the men are so young and new, sometimes tentative and sometimes reckless, and extremely creative. It's inspiring. Andromache, used to taking the lead, finds herself lying back as Quynh sets a more slow and teasing pace than she could have imagined enjoying, and yet she enjoys it, because the man she dreams of being has shown her how. 

Quynh, never much interested in the pleasures of the rear entrance, begins to share Nicolò's appreciation for them, much to Andromache's delight. As Andromache works her tongue over and into Quynh's puckered hole, Quynh's moans and cries take on a tone she's never heard before. _How glorious it is to discover something new after all this time,_ she thinks as she slides two spit-slick fingers into Quynh's ass, watching her lover's body arch in ecstasy.

Much later, Quynh says with a wicked grin that Andromache can hear in the dark, "You know, they're dreaming of us too."

It doesn't precisely become a competition—well, it does, but not the sort where anyone loses. When Nicolò inexpertly ties up Yusuf (whose name they have learned at last from Nicolò shouting it at the moment of climax), Andromache uses two of Quynh's long scarves to wrap her up like a spider's dinner. A few nights later the favor is returned. Andromache dreams of Yusuf wrestling Nicolò to the floor and stabbing a knife through his hand and into the wooden boards, taking rough pleasure from his pinned and writhing body. Quynh, eyes gleaming, retaliates by sewing Andromache open, using heavy thread to stitch her labia to her inner thighs and watching her body futilely try to reject the intrusion. Andromache gasps with the stinging pain as Quynh slicks up a hand with blood and pushes it slowly, wholly inside her gaping cunt. Quynh bites at Andromache's clit until a climax is a thing that happens to her, a demand she's helpless to resist. 

When she swings up onto Zele the next morning, she flinches, expecting her flesh to be tender and raw. Quynh rides ahead of her, looking smug.

"You could have done that anytime you liked," Andromache calls to her. "You didn't have to wait until some man inspired you."

"Two men," Quynh says. "Two very special men. I really want to meet them."

"You really want to fuck them," Andromache says in Occitan. Somehow it sounds filthier that way.

"Of course," Quynh says. "Don't you?"

Andromache shifts in the saddle. "I feel like I already have."

They find a passable boarding house in Konstantinoupolis—even Andromache has to admit the city has improved greatly in the twenty or so years since they last came through—and debate whether to stay there or press on toward Venezia. They decide to stay for a week, at least, and hope to get some clue as to Yusuf and Nicolò's whereabouts. 

They're embarrassed to realize they haven't really been paying much attention to atmospheric details. The sex has been just too hot. But luck is with them, and that night Andromache catches a glimpse of one of Yusuf's drawings, a little scribble of charcoal on slate. It's unmistakably the dome of Hagia Sophia.

They spend three long days watching people stream in and out of the cathedral, and in the end what Andromache recognizes are the hilts of their swords. It feels like years since she saw the two men slaughter each other over and over. She feels a pang in her middle, remembering. Beside her, Quynh lifts a hand to her throat.

Then Quynh says "Nicolò" and Andromache says "Yusuf" and there's a moment of stillness, something in the universe turning with a click like clockwork and locking into place.

That night, tangled together, the four of them no longer dream.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [And Possibly I Like The Thrill](https://archiveofourown.org/works/26000878) by [No_Illusions](https://archiveofourown.org/users/No_Illusions/pseuds/No_Illusions)




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